Company in the Spotlight: Polycentric
To realize all the goals of the PUSH-IT project, several companies are involved, from drilling the actual wells to the digital modelling of the system. In this series, we want to highlight some of those companies. Who are they? How do they contribute to the PUSH-IT project? What are their future plans ? In this edition: Polycentric.
What type of company is Polycentric and what do you do in the PUSH-IT project?
Polycentric is a strategic advisory and implementation agency specialised in stakeholder engagement, communication and social innovation in the energy transition. We work on complex projects where sustainable technology, policy, public trust, safety and long-term decision-making come together.
In PUSH-IT, we are responsible for Dissemination, Exploitation and Communication. We make the project’s knowledge, insights and results accessible to different audiences, support stakeholder engagement, and help create the conditions for future uptake and scaling of UTES.
In practise, this means we connect a highly technical innovation with the societal questions, concerns and decision-making contexts of public authorities, energy companies, local communities and other stakeholders.
What does the scale-up of UTES in the Netherlands and Europe need, from your point of view?
From our point of view, scaling up UTES requires more than technical validation. It requires a combination of technical reliability, spatial planning, regulatory clarity, viable business models, public trust and institutional capacity. Ultimately, it also requires an appealing and compelling proposition for all involved.
UTES can play an important role in addressing the seasonal mismatch between renewable heat supply and heat demand. But the most convincing way to show this is by demonstrating it in practice, together with the stakeholders involved. This means showing that underground heat storage can be a safe, reliable, affordable and economically viable solution within current and future regulatory frameworks.
What do stakeholders think about large-scale underground thermal energy storage?
Stakeholder views are diverse and context-dependent. Based on interviews and sessions with professional stakeholders so far, many recognise the potential value of UTES, especially because it can contribute to a more sustainable, reliable and flexible heat system. It can help make better use of renewable heat sources and reduce dependence on fossil heating.
At the same time, stakeholders often have questions and concerns. These may relate to safety, environmental impact, effects on the subsurface, groundwater, monitoring, governance, costs, disruption during implementation, and the relationship with other underground activities. For local communities, the issue is often not only the technology itself, but also whether they trust the organisations involved, whether the process is transparent and whether their concerns are taken seriously.
From our experience, stakeholders do not simply ask: “Is this technology technically possible or economically feasible? They ask: ‘What is it?’, ‘How does it work?’, ‘Why here?’, ‘Who decides?’, ‘What are the costs and risks?’, ‘Who benefits?’, ‘Can we trust the monitoring?’, and ‘How does this affect our living environment?’
That is why stakeholder engagement and communication, for both professional stakeholders and residents, should not be treated as something to be managed at the end of a project. It is a design condition for responsible implementation and scale-up.
What lessons has Polycentric learned so far during the PUSH-IT project?
One important lesson is that UTES has strong potential, but its successful implementation depends on how well technical, institutional, economic and societal dimensions are connected.
A second lesson is that the term “underground thermal energy storage” is not self-explanatory for many stakeholders. It requires clear, specific and transparent communication, without oversimplifying the technology.
A third lesson is that stakeholder engagement needs to be tailored to local conditions. PUSH-IT works across different geological, heat-network, societal and regulatory contexts in Europe.
A fourth lesson is that scaling up requires learning across sites. Each pilot has its own context, but together they can generate transferable principles: what needs to be explained, where resistance may arise, which governance questions return, and what types of stakeholder processes help build trust.
Finally, we have learned that dissemination, exploitation and communication are not supporting activities at the margins of the project. They are central to creating impact, by supporting public understanding, stakeholder engagement and market uptake.
How could Polycentric contribute to scaling up UTES throughout the country or Europe?
Polycentric can contribute through stakeholder analyses, community building, joint communication strategies, learning communities and follow-up projects in which stakeholder engagement and communication play a central role.
Societal acceptance is essential if underground thermal energy storage is to become a trusted and widely adopted part of the heat transition in the Netherlands and across Europe.
PUSH-IT is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101096566.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
